Excerpt: For angry heretics on the run, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger sure know how to enjoy themselves. Sitting in a cozy Berkeley restaurant just a few blocks from San Francisco Bay, exchanging tasting notes on the vermentino ("cold white wine is so good with fatty, fried food," Shellenberger says), they recount with perverse pleasure, in tones almost as dry as the wine, how they've been branded as infidels by fellow environmentalists.

It started in 2004, when they published their first Tom Paine-style essay accusing the movement's leaders of failing to deal effectively with the global warming crisis. "We thought that someone was going to take a swing at us," Shellenberger says. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope published withering counterattacks, and the two men were dubbed "the bad boys of American environmentalism" by author Bill McKibben.

Nordhaus, 41, and Shellenberger, 36, didn't set out to infuriate their former
colleagues. On the contrary, they were good Berkeley citizens - partial to black
clothing, into biking (Nordhaus) and yoga (Shellenberger), fluent in Pinot Noir.
Above all, they were passionate about the environment. For the better part of a
decade, they toiled in the green movement as consultants and political strategists, each hoping to change the world.

Instead, the climate crisis changed the rules: It demanded a new way of framing the debate, and the pair became disillusioned when the environmental establishment stubbornly refused to adapt. That led to their fateful essay, with the not-so-subtle title The Death of Environmentalism. Overnight, the
two became pariahs.

And now, with the October publication of their first book, Break Through: From "The Death of Environmentalism" to the Politics of Possibility, they
are going to face the full fury of enraged environmentalists. Pope, who has read the book, predicts that the reception from the movement "will be harshly negative."

Environmentalists, therefore, have missed a huge opportunity. Rather than being leaders in solving the global climate crisis, they are content to be doomsayers and scolds. What Nordhaus and Shellenberger advocate is what might be called post-environmentalism, an ambitious new philosophy that isn't afraid to put people ahead of nature and to dream big about creating economic growth - neither of which environmentalists have been very good at. Their vision cuts across traditional political divides: It's pro-growth, pro-technology, and pro-environment. They have specific proposals about Brazilian rain forests, the auto industry, and global warming preparedness.

But the heart of the book is its unabashed desire to create a new way to think about our problems. Just as computer technology fueled the economic boom that started in the mid '90s, greentech can drive the first boom of the new
millennium. "Global warming," they write, "demands unleashing human power, creating a new economy, and remaking nature as we prepare for the future."

The two authors respond with their usual feisty aplomb. "No environmentalist will say investment isn't important," Nordhaus says, "but look at what they are actually putting their resources into." He and Shellenberger are certain that the public will support massive government spending on greentech - bigger than anything the Sierra Club or Silicon Valley VCs are proposing - only if it is presented not as an attempt to rein in prosperity and economic growth but as a quantum leap for the global economy and climate. If they're wrong, Shellenberger and Nordhaus may be best remembered for tilting at windmills - when windmills were what they were fighting for all along.
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/15-10/mf_burning?currentPage=all

Update: Anchor to CNN Meteorologist: 'Just don't say anything for a couple more days'
Excerpt: Anchor Kiran Chetry summed up the network sense of the debate at the end. "Just don't say anything for a couple more days."
Global warming certainly generated a lot of heat - for CNN. Meteorologist Rob Marciano told the October 4 "American Morning" audience: "There are definitely some inaccuracies" in the Al Gore film "An Inconvenient Truth."
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20071004161833.aspx
After the previous report ended up "stirring a new storm" and generating "a lot of e-mails to our show," Marciano followed up with even more things Gore got wrong the next day. "He does talk about tornados, implying that there's an increase in tornados from global warming, that's not necessary true," said Marciano.

In the earlier report, Marciano had said, "There are definitely some inaccuracies" in the film. "The biggest thing I have a problem with
is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming," he concluded. This time, he followed up with quotes from two scientists with conflicting views about hurricanes. "First up is the science and operations officer of the National Hurricane Center, a big time researcher named Chris Landsea." Landsea explained why he didn't think warming was causing current hurricane problems. "He told me," Marciano said of Landsea, "the best computer models suggest global warming will cause changes in hurricanes. We should see slightly stronger hurricanes, 5 percent stronger 100 years from now. But the concern that we're seeing drastic increasetoday due to global warming I think is wrong." Marciano explained that there are good reasons for Landsea's skepticism because the global data "is not as reliable" as the information used by the United States. "We're the only country that routinely flies into hurricanes and that's the only way to truly see how strong a storm is."
He added that Atlantic hurricanes count for just 15 percent of the global total, so the results could easily be skewed by bad data.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20071005091234.aspx

Flashback: CNN Meteorologist Compared Gore's Film to "Fiction" - "The Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films as well."
Excerpt: CNN reported on Thursday that a British judge has called Al Gore's
Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth unfit for schools "because it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies and sentimental mush."

British schools may now have to preface any showing of the film with a warning. CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano responded to this story by applauding and saying, "Finally, finally," before commenting sarcastically that "the Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films as well." Marciano said he objected in particular to the film's claim that global warming causes stronger hurricanes, noting that the current hurricane season has only been average.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CNN_weatherman_applauds_global_warming_skepticism_1004.html

(Watch video clip here)

Former CDC Malaria Expert Debunks Malaria global warming fears
Excerpt: So the globalization of mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases is nothing new and we can expect further surprises in the future. There is also nothing new about mosquito-borne disease in Europe.

Despite all this, a WHO official has claimed that warming allowed this cold-weather mosquito to settle in Italy. Whether this is ignorance or deliberate misinformation, it diverts attention from the real cause: the increasing globalization of disease as a result of modern transportation.

World leaders have just been discussing far-reaching policies at the U.N.'s High Level Event and at President Bush's Meeting of Major Economies on Climate Change and Energy Security, where they were bombarded with this kind of distortion. The public will surely soon get fed up with constant hype about global warming. Sadly, when they realize that the alarmists were crying wolf, it is confidence in science and scientists that will suffer: we have to stick to the science and nothing but the science.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2007/10/137_11332.html

[Note: Paul Reiter, a malaria expert and professor of entomology and tropical
disease with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, participated in the UN IPCC process and called the concept of consensus on global warming a "sham." Professor Reiter, an expert in malaria, had to threaten legal action to have his name removed from the IPCC. "That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he said on March 5, 2007. "It's not true." Reiter has written more than 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals and worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for over 20 years.]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=440049&in_page_id=1965

Clooney admits eco-hypocrisy: 'I also have a big weak spot because I've flown on private jets'
Excerpt: Do you think celebrity activism has become cliché? David Barry, Armidale, Australia.

Clooney: You don't want to be a spokesperson unless you are absolutely
committed to a cause because you can hurt it. I've been asked to help represent
environmental groups. I'm a big proponent of cleaning up the environment. I have two electric cars. But I also have a big weak spot because I've flown on private jets. However, I welcome any of these dumb pundits who make celebrities out to be bad guys to a discussion about Darfur. Because I've been there and I've met all the players, and I guarantee you, the pundits haven't."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1668446,00.html

The sun's radiation reaches the earth in a broad spectrum, not just "light". The warm earth emits long infrared radiation. Some of that radiation is absorbed by
greenhouse gasses, the most significant of which is water vapor followed by CO2. The energy is re-radiated at wave lengths that differ from the excitation radiation.

Most of the re-radiated energy is lost to space but some reaches the earth where it contributes to keeping the atmosphere at a comfortable temperature. The radiation is not "trapped".

In his explanation of the greenhouse effect he incorrectly equates it to global warming. This helps create the perception that people who disagree with his conclusions deny the existence of global warming and/or the greenhouse effect. Actually, there is general agreement on the following facts:
-There is a greenhouse effect. It makes our planet livable. . CO2 is a greenhouse gas. There is disagreement as to its significance since water vapor is, by far, the most important. - There was global warming on the order of about 1ºF during the twentieth century. There is disagreement as to its cause.

The assertion that his professor, Roger Revelle, was the first person to have the idea to measure the amount of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere is false. Scientists have been measuring atmospheric CO2 since well before Revelle was born and the measurements showing increased concentrations were reported 20 years before Revelle's study. Also, Gore implies that Revelle was concerned about the global warming effects of increased CO2 emissions. He wasn't. In fact, Revelle is on record saying that increased CO2 could be beneficial and that it is too early (in 1991) for drastic action to prevent global warming effects.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/detailed-comments-on-an-inconvenient-truth/

Tourism will hurt destinations, UN warns
Excerpt: A booming worldwide tourism industry could prove its own worst enemy by contributing to the global warming that threatens some of the planet's most prized destinations, United Nations agencies warned on Monday.

"The tourism industry is both challenged by climate change and a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions," Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Program, said at an international conference in Davos, Switzerland. Coastal, mountain and nature destinations, especially in poor countries or island states such as the Maldives, are likely to be the most affected by weather shifts and rising sea levels or temperatures, according to extracts from the report. Franco Frangialli, secretary-general of the UN World Tourism Organization, called for immediate action from the industry and public authorities, even though tourism's contribution to global warming is smaller than that of many other industries.

"Climate change is pushing the world of tourism to a revolution - not only an economic and technological one, but also a cultural one," he told the three-day conference in this Swiss Alpine resort. "The Swiss Alps suffered due to a lack of snow this winter and it's not due to chance. Tourism contributes to climate change just as it is a victim [of it]," he added. Tourism activities account for 4 to 6 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, according to the report, which is due to be released this year. Emissions are being driven by the rapid increase in international travel, with about 846 million trips worldwide last year and growing at an average annual rate of 6.5 per cent since 1950, according to the UNWTO. The number of international trips is expected to nearly double to 1.6 billion by 2020.

Global Warming and the Chesapeake Bay - By Guest: Dennis Avery
Excerpt: I was invited to testify before the Senate environment committee Sept. 26, on "The Impact of Global Warming on the Chesapeake Bay." http://newsbyus.com/more.php?id=9826_0_1_0_M
I told the committee there was no man-made global warming impact on the Bay.
http://newsbyus.com/more.php?id=9826_0_1_0_M
The Bay has been warmer than now several times because the moderate 1,500-year climate cycles have warmed it at least five times since the Bay was created 12,000 years ago. At least two of those cycles, and perhaps all of them, were warmer than today. Our net global warming since 1940 is 0.2 degrees C, with no warming at all since 1998. There's no evidence that man-made CO2 has added much to this warming, though perhaps 0.1 degree C of today's heat is due to the greenhouse gasses. The 1,500-year cycle is instead linked to the sun and the sunspot index. Nor has a single wild species gone extinct due to higher temperatures. Instead, the birds, butterflies, trees, fish and mammals have been extending their ranges, creating more biodiversity per acre than the world has seen in 500 years.
http://newsbyus.com/more.php?id=9826_0_1_0_M

Gore 'likely winner' of Nobel Peace Prize
Excerpt: Former Vice President Al Gore and other campaigners against climate change lead experts' choices for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, an award once reserved for statesmen, peacemakers and human rights activists.

If a campaigner against global warming carries off the high world accolade later this month, it will accentuate a shift to reward work outside traditional peacekeeping and reinforce the link between peace and the environment. The winner, who will take $1.5 million in prize money, will be announced in the Norwegian capital on October 12 from a field of 181 nominees. Gore, who has raised awareness with his book and Oscar-winning documentary
"An Inconvenient Truth," and Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who has shed light on how global warming affects Arctic peoples, were nominated to share the prize by two Norwegian parliamentarians. "I think they are likely winners this year," said Stein Toennesson, director of Oslo's International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) and a long-time Nobel Peace Prize watcher.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071005/wl_canada_nm/canada_nobel_peace_col;_ylt=ArM5TwYqB1XjihGqKMo.jRxvaA8F

Gore refuses debate challenges: 'It does not make sense for him to engage in a
dialogue with them'
Excerpt: Seven hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend to try to get someone to talk to you and not get an answer. That's how much the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based libertarian think tank, has forked over in six months for advertisements in national newspapers trying to persuade Al Gore to debate one of its experts on global warming issues.

"We have tried, repeatedly, to contact Gore directly, with registered letters and calls to his office, and have never received a reply," says Joseph Bast, Heartland president. A spokeswoman for Gore told me by e-mail that Heartland is an oil-company-funded group that denies that global warming
is real and caused by human activities. "The debate has shifted to how to solve the climate crisis, not if there is one," said Kalee Kreider. "It does not make sense for him to engage in a dialogue with them at this time."

The issue is a bit more complicated than that. What Bast wants is for Gore to debate one of three authorities who dispute the former vice president's assertion that global warming is a crisis that requires an immediate, hugely expensive response potentially damaging to the U.S. and world economies.

One of the Heartland experts is Dennis Avery, an economist, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and co-author, with Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, of the book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. As you might guess from that
title, Avery sees global warming as a natural phenomenon in which "there may be a human factor but if so it's small." He describes the warming as "moderate" and says there's been no warming since 1998. "Where's the crisis?"

The Heartland case is not the first time Gore has ducked a forum. Earlier this year he canceled an interview with Denmark's largest newspaper when he learned it would include questions from Bjorn Lomborg, respected author of The Skeptical Environmentalist.

"Gore's sermon is not one that will stand scrutiny," says Christopher C. Horner,
another one of Heartland's debate candidates, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/589551,CST-EDT-HUNT05.article

Global Warming's Trillion-Dollar Turkey
Excerpt: Last July, this column reported that the latest global warming bill - the
Low Carbon Economy Act of 2007, introduced by Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. and Arlen Specter, R-Pa. - would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion in its first 10 years and untold trillions of dollars in subsequent decades.

This week, the EPA sent its analysis of the bill's impact on climate to Bingaman and Specter. Now we can see what we'd get for our money, and we may as well just build a giant bonfire with the cash and enjoy toasting marshmallows over it. For reference purposes, the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 380 parts per million. The EPA
estimates that if no action is taken to curb CO2 emissions, the atmospheric
concentration of CO2 would be 718 ppm by 2095. If the Bingaman-Specter bill were implemented, however, the EPA estimates that CO2 levels would be 695 ppm – a whopping reduction of 23 ppm. The EPA also estimated that if all countries - including China, India, Brazil and other developing nations - curb CO2 emissions, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would be 491 ppm in 2095, including the above-mentioned 23 ppm reduction from the implementation of the Bingaman-Specter bill. So it appears that no matter how you slice it, Bingaman-Specter is worth a 23 ppm-reduction in atmospheric CO2 by 2095. But what are the climatic implications of
this reduction in terms of global temperature?

After all, we are talking about global warming. Although the EPA didn't pursue its analysis that far, figuring out the implications are readily doable using the assumptions and formulas of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under the no-action scenario (718-to-695 ppm), the IPCC formulas indicate that the multitrillion-dollar Bingaman-Specter bill might reduce average global temperature by 0.13 degrees Celsius. Under the maximum regulation scenario (514-to-491 ppm), Bingaman-Specter
might reduce average global temperature by 0.18 degrees Celsius.

Actual temperature reductions are likely to be less since these estimates rely on the IPCC's alarmist-friendly assumptions and formulas. The question, then, becomes this: Is it really worth trillions of taxpayer dollars over 90 years to perhaps reduce global temperatures by 0.13-0.18 degrees Celsius?

So the Bingaman-Specter bill not only would waste taxpayer money, but it would harm economic growth and reduce family income - all without affecting global temperature in any sort of meaningful or even detectable way.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299419,00.html

Climatologist warns: Prepare for Cooling, not Warming
Excerpt: The world is cooling. Global temperatures have declined since 1998 and a growing number of climate experts expect this trend to continue until at least 2030.

This, happening while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise, is in
complete contradiction to the theory of human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW). The CBC and other die-hard AGW proponents respond by publicizing selected glacial melts and the impact of dramatic but improbable sea level rises, the only warming issues that seem to grab public attention.

Canadian politicians simply follow along, parroting scientifically unjustified AGW rhetoric while lamenting that "climate change is real!" They either don't know, or hope the public don't know, that climate changes all the time no matter what we do. For most of the world's plants and animals, humanity included, cooling is a far greater threat than warming. This is especially true for Canada where energy usage, and consequently pollution levels, will rise as temperatures drop. More importantly, if we prepare for warming
and it cools, Canada's food supply is seriously at risk since we are already at the northern limit to agriculture. Even a small amount of cooling would necessitate increased genetic engineering of crops and animals to sustain ourselves and further cooling still would end much of today's farming in Canada. Yet, if we prepare for cooling and it warms, we simply adopt farming practices used to the south of us. It is the case in most parts of the world that adaptation to warming is far easier than adapting to cooling. Canada's situation is just that much worse due to our latitude.

Despite this very real threat of continued cooling, our leaders still press for
developed nations to dramatically curb CO2 emissions to counter possible warming.

It is time to finally lift the lid off the Pandora's Box of modern day climate
science and let the public hear what scientists are really concluding about this
complex and immature discipline. With billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, not to mention the future of our food supply, there is no other ethical choice.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/site/article/122

Hollywood's 'psychological global-warming horror film' gets positive reviews
Excerpt: James Le Gros plays a troubled climatologist at an oil company camp in "The Last Winter."

Apparently there is something new under the sun: a psychological global-warming horror film. "The Last Winter" sounds like a genre-movie platypus - a little bit of this, a little piece of that - but it stops short of laying an egg. In fact, it works eerily well. Whatever weird filmmaking wavelength actor-turned-director Larry Fessenden is onto, he deserves to be encouraged. The movie takes place in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, at an oil company test-drilling camp overseen by a macho insecure corporate cowboy named Pollack (Ron Perlman). While he's been south at headquarters for a month, getting permission to bring in the big rigs, his second-in-command, Abby (Connie Britton), has taken up with Hoffman (Le Gros), a bearded climatologist the Environmental Protection Agency has forced on the project.

Pollack hates environmentalists even when they're not in Abby's bed. A mood of gathering doom is established at the outset, and as "The Last Winter" progresses, it grips tighter and tighter. There's an unseasonable thaw and the permafrost is melting. One of the base personnel, Pollack's young nephew Maxwell (Zach Gilford), is acting increasingly deranged, as though he were seeing things the others can't.

Maybe he's the canary in this coal mine; maybe, Hoffman surmises, the melt is
releasing toxic fumes that have been locked in the deep freeze for tens of thousands of years. Or perhaps there's a supernatural explanation - the strength of "The Last Winter" is that it's open to any and all theories.
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20071005_A_global-warming_horror_flick__It_works.html

Beware of climate control
Excerpt: While the media and environmentalists regularly hammer the Bush
administration for its alleged lethargy in addressing global warming, an activist
group is working through individual states and substantially influencing how they will reduce their output of greenhouse gases. Taxpayers and energy consumers will take a hit to their household budgets because of it. What's amazing is that the states - including Maryland - are using the Center for Climate Strategies to de facto create their plans to address climate change, despite CCS's predisposition to alarmism and the fact that the policy development process is mostly paid for by extreme environmentalist foundations.
http://www.examiner.com/a972918~Paul_Chesser__Beware_of_climate_control.html

As such, it certainly was no surprise when NASA released a report
Monday claiming "the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds," virtually no media outlets shared the information with the citizenry, and those that did still blamed the melting ice on - you guessed it - global warming. The largely boycotted announcement out of NASA stated no such thing:

A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data
from NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice.

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.
Hmmm. So, unusual winds pushed ice south into warmer waters causing the above average
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/05/unusual-winds-caused-arctic-ice-melts-not-global-warming

A new watchdog Web site on the Center for Climate Strategies is now officially ready to be recognized, reviewed and linked from your Web sites:
http://climatestrategieswatch.com/

Are Churches Replacing Theology with Ecology?
Excerpt: Are too many churches these days more concerned about saving the earth than saving souls? A British sociologist and a prominent American theologian are among those who might say so.

Frank Furedi, who teaches at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, suggested that churches have replaced theology with ecology, using
ecological virtues as a platform to assert their authority in society. "In recent
years, some in the church have sought to gain the public's ear through the greening of traditional doctrines, and Christ the Savior is fast becoming Christ the environmental activist," wrote Furedi in a recent article that appeared in the
independent online publication Spiked. "Western society is continually in search of rituals and symbols through which moral probity can be affirmed," he continued. "It appears that, for many church leaders, the project of saving the planet offers more opportunities for reconstituting rituals and symbols than the saving of souls."
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071004/29578_Are_Some_Churches_Replacing_Theology_with_Ecology%3F.htm

Link to Vaclav Klaus' speech to the United Nations. (Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ij5oQuZLvw

Chinese bid to cast one-child policy as emissions curb raises eyebrows
Excerpt: Should a country's efforts to control population growth qualify it for
greenhouse gas reduction credits?
http://www.eenews.net/special_reports/climate_change/

China thinks so. Su Wei, a senior Foreign Ministry official who led China's delegation to United Nations climate talks in Vienna in August, told Reuters then Bejing's one-child policy had prevented about 300 million births since it was implemented in the late 1970s. That amounts, he said, to 1.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide avoided in 2005 alone -- a calculation based on an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which says developing countries emit about 4.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person
per year.

Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's National Development and Reform
Commission, echoed the claim at the National Press Club last week. But the Chinese officials' assertions -- offered to rebut claims that China has done little to combat global warming -- have not been received warmly. "This just seems to open an entirely new can of worms that I really can't imagine will get China or certainly the global environment anywhere very good very fast," Liz Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview. "Does the United States get a bonus for not having had 1 billion more people?" she asked. "What about Russia and Japan with declining birth rates? I can't imagine India will sign on to this."

Population is a touchy subject. Groups that previously embraced the concept of
population "control" have distanced themselves from it, especially as immigration has come to the forefront. Sierra Club, for one, supported "legislation to establish federal machinery to deal with the problems of rapid human population growth" until the mid-1990s and still endorses "population stabilization" as defined by the group Population Connection, formerly known as Zero Population Growth. Sarah Fairchild, director of the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environmental Program, said her group was currently working on "renewing" its population policy and "bringing in more appropriate language." "We look at it from a human rights perspective, not a population control perspective," she said.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/2007/10/04/archive/9?terms=china
(subscription required)

Corals May Have Defense Against Global Warming
Excerpt: Ancient corals may have been more adaptable to changing ocean chemistry than previously thought, a new study shows.

The findings may offer hope that modern corals can adapt as global warming causes seas to become more acidic. These fossil corals in diverse reef communities adjusted to an acidic environment by altering the
way they built their chalky skeletons. Modern hard corals-known as
scleractinians-form reefs of thousands of tiny skeletons made from a calcium
carbonate called aragonite. Aragonite is susceptible to the corrosive effects of
acidic oceans, which today has become a byproduct of a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "We now have many different arguments to prove that these corals were actually made originally out of calcite-and not just aragonite that was transformed after the coral died and become fossilized," said study co-author Jaroslaw Stolarski, a paleontologist from the Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071004-fossil-coral.html

Author: No new U.S. Climate Laws until 2009 is good news
Excerpt: In a Reuters article dated 10/2/07, a United States Senator laments that no climate change laws will be enacted until after the next presidential election.

That's actually good news, says Holly Fretwell, author of The Sky's Not Falling: Why It's OK to Chill about Global Warming (Kids Ahead Books, 0-9767269-4-7, for ages 8-12, Sept. 2007), a new book for kids designed to inform, not indoctrinate, on the subject of global warming.

"There is so much that we have yet to learn about global warming," asserts Fretwell, who contends that the jury remains very much out with regards to how much humans contribute to the phenomenon -- and what can be done
about it, no matter how many tax dollars are thrown at it. "With so many gaps in the climate change story, it's a relief that Congress is not going to rush to create policies that may hurt more than help."
It's just that attitude that makes The Sky's Not Falling! Why It's OK To Chill About Global Warming such a breath of fresh air. In Sky, natural resources policy expert and college instructor Fretwell shows kids 8-12 that it's human ingenuity and adaptability - and not a mindless fear of change - that are most likely to guarantee the Earth a healthy future. Parents who'vecomforted children upset by Photoshopped pictures of stranded animals and faux
"the-end-is-near" documentaries will embrace this smartly-written book.
http://pressmediawire.com/article.cfm?articleID=2592

Journalists, Global Warming & the Truth
Excerpt: Being skeptical used to be a badge of honor for journalists, but if one
reads any newspaper these days, most reporters casually refer to "global warming" without any hint that it is anything other than a done deal.

Too many reporters have completely bought into the notion that humans and their use of fossil fuels are destroying the atmosphere and "causing" global warming. Neither assumption is true.

Of course, what makes this easier is the constant stream of environmental propagandathat attributes everything to "global warming." The list is vast and generally idiotic. Humans must now take responsibility for both droughts and severe storms. Winter blizzards are said to be the result of "global warming."

There is no consensus - science operates on the basis of reproducible fact, not general agreement - and the critics are, in fact, a growing number of scientists and others who have come to regard "global warming" as a hoax.
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=28382

Burbank may ban sale of foil balloons
Excerpt: Those shiny, silvery balloons that carry birthday greetings and other
cheery missives may put smiles on children's faces - but they're giving utility
officials a big headache. The helium-filled party favors are made from metalized nylon and can cause power outages when they come into contact with electrical lines.

In Burbank, officials are blaming at least four recent outages on errant balloons, prompting two City Council members to ask for a report Tuesday to find out how officials can deal with the problem. One of the options under consideration is a ban on the sale of the foil balloons in the city.
http://www.dailynews.com/glendale/ci_6953617